The Ventriloquist of ‘paintings’

The opening of a new art-space on this island is always very exciting.

Mark Sullivan, an architect with a passion for art took over a beautiful space in Tigne street, Sliema, and revealed its raw beauty, transforming it into a serious of rooms and together with a team of passionate art lovers planned a program of exhibitions which so far has wowed patrons and collectors.

R Gallery’s last show, AWOL, was a group exhibition of international contemporary artists - multimedia practitioners, namely Maxine Attard, Charlie Cauchi, Romeo Roxman Gatt and Duška Maleševic whose work is informed by the plethora of interpretations of AWOL (absent without leave/absent from where one should be; missing) curated by the gallery’s Creative Director, contemporary artist Julien Vinet.

The show, which opened on the 12th of December and ran until February 11th 2023, saw hundreds of visitors, from the seasoned gallery goer to the art novice. As part of the gallery’s mission to act as a catalytic connector between artists, art and the community, each month an event is held as part of a series called R Talks, which invites poets, musicians, artists and others from across the artistic realms to interpret the works for an intimate evening.

On the 26th January 2023, the gallery held R Talks 3.2: AWOL: A night of sound by Claire Tonna. Tonna, a prolific singersongwriter, shared her words, songs and thoughts in connection to AWOL and the rich pool of interpretations that emerge through it. Inspired by the works presented by the four artists, Tonna opened her inner world to us for an intimate and magnetic night of sound at the gallery.

“I often found myself disappearing from noise, chaos, norms, words, thoughts and actions; it is how I survived. It’s how I can listen to the terror of beauty and power that lies inside me,” she said. “I share songs and writings that emerged from such journeys and transfigurations.”

Claire Tonna is a queer Maltese singer and songwriter renowned internationally for her distinctively contralto voice and writing, considered to be one that transmits the plural facets of human emotion and empowerment.

Tonna’s works and performances have been taking place all over the globe in the last two decades inside theatres, festivals, lgbtqi spaces, prisons, slums, refugee centres, mental hospitals and many other spaces resonating with her truth-filled music and vocation.

The facets of her presence and voice are acclaimed to present the audience an experience of incomparable empowerment. In 2019 she won the title and award of ‘Best European Singer/ Songwriter’ rewarded by the Tour Music Fest, Sony (Italy) and Berklee College from Boston, United States. In 2023 Tonna is releasing her new material and sound composed in the last transfigurative years.

“I sing what heals my broken bones and sing them in the one voice we are; Human,” she finished.

JD: Please tell me how the art talked to you?

CT: The theme featured in the works ‘absence without leave’ (AWOL), ‘dissapearing’ definitely a resonated with my recent writing and the personal experiences that it reflects. I do find ‘dissappearing’ to often be a means of survival. Disappearing from the noise, people, thoughts, so I can listen to what is inside me and cater for my needs and my need for peace. So it was very easy to hear the art talking to me and in a way seeing my own experience in it.

JD: Can you verbalize the process from experiencing the works to your artistic reaction to them?

CT: I entered the gallery with my journal and just let my pen translate my first encounter with the art work into words. I basically translated the works into songs. I have done this other times at Austin Camillieri’s ‘Leiva: anger is a lazy form of grief’ where I translated the rooms into songs and also at the ‘pelvic laboratory’ residency where I translated dance and movement into words and songs. At AWOL my artistic reaction was once again transcribed into songwriting and singing the works birthed from the work itself and all the works transferred to me. Sharing them with an audience was once again another reaction to the core element that unites us all in the very themes presented. It was a most powerful and intimate experience to live through, such transferring from artist to art work to song to the people’s own hearts.

JD: How did it feel to be in the space and give your all?

CT: It felt like home, bare, real, belonged, liberating.

JD: Do we need more of this? Of a conversation between artists using their media?

CT: Yes definitely. Such conversations connect us all on so many various planes. It’s art and the expression of the human experience shared, and it connects our own humanity, our pain, hope, trust and belongingness. We converse like this naturally but when we converse with such deep truths it becomes a healing experience where we live a human connection that is often lost or hard to find in the world that we live in.

Translating the artwork into song added to the experience of the artworks delivery to every person there, deeper than just an audible deliverance. It was a connecting means for the very human heart we together are.